In fact, I'm on the verge of just walking downstairs and powering the server off. For good. The Phoenyx is listed in Spamcop, because somebody spammed a listowner address, and the listowner is Spamcop-filtered. I can't keep this from happening... the Phoenyx uses SpamAssassin on most of its mail, but some still gets through. The alternative is to direct all listowner email to my own mailbox, and that puts the workload right back on me. Another alternative is to insist that listowners have enough technical savvy to run addresses that don't risk this sort of thing. Which generally means running their own mail servers, since ISPs have a habit of putting spamfilters on without mentioning it to them. That's raising the bar a little bit too high, I should think. Another alternative is to power the whole thing down and let the spammers win. I'm leaning toward that, this fine morning. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): The Whole Phoenyx Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
On Mon, Feb 16, 2004 at 08:50:39AM -0600, Karen J. Cravens wrote: > Another alternative is to power the whole thing down and let the spammers > win. I'm leaning toward that, this fine morning. Unfortunately, the blacklists are just becoming tools that will help the spammers win. Some argue that the collatoral damage is just part of fighting spam, but your example clearly shows that it is part of the problem, not part of the solution. It's not clear what will happen about spam. Unfortunately, it's the classic example of the tragedy of the commons. The golden age of the Internet, when we had cheap and easy E-mail, has been over for a few years, unfortunately. -Rob -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
On Mon, 16 Feb 2004, Robert A. Knop Jr. wrote: RAKJ>Unfortunately, the blacklists are just becoming tools that will help the RAKJ>spammers win. Some argue that the collatoral damage is just part of RAKJ>fighting spam, but your example clearly shows that it is part of the RAKJ>problem, not part of the solution. Not as such. The fact of the matter is, for listowners, the Phoenyx *does* relay spam, quite cheerfully. The theory has been that the listowner address is one that can't afford false positives... ironically enough, because that would make us legitimate targets for blacklists. We *have* to let members be able to contact the listowner easily if they have trouble unsubscribing. This may be a side effect of whitelisting once that extends to the "magic" addresses... if you're subscribed via an address that forwards to your real one, and you try to unsubscribe via the real one (assuming it's not set to be an alternate, which I'm sure some lurkers don't bother with), depending on the level the whitelisting happens at the unsubscribe attempt may get silently discarded. (We're hoping to set whitelisting up at the MTA level, at least.) If that's so, we *have* to have a good address they can mail to, that's not protected by the whitelist. The problem isn't blacklists. The problem is that spam has gotten bad enough that people are willing to accept ISPs applying blacklists, including overenthusiastic ones (I want something that *flags* mail, not suppresses it, myself), without even informing their users and, sometimes, without giving the users a choice in the matter. Spam filtering needs to be opt *in*, in case of people needing to avoid false positives. At the very least, users need to be kept informed (at which point most of the sheep would accuse their ISP of spamming them...) We're going to have to go to one of several systems: dropping the owner- addresses altogether and giving out moderators' real addresses; switching it to a forward-as-attachment system (this will rely on people being able to whitelist the robot address); switching owner- to a local mailbox instead of forwarding it. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): The Whole Phoenyx Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
On Mon, 16 Feb 2004, Karen J. Cravens wrote: > The Phoenyx is listed in Spamcop, because somebody spammed a listowner > address, and the listowner is Spamcop-filtered. Actually, it's not clear exactly how we got listed. === # In the past week, this system has: * Been detected sending mail to spam traps * Been witnessed sending mail about 10 times === The FAQ seems to indicate that 1) spam reports have to be manually submitted, and 2) that we should have received an email telling us who reported us. We haven't received such a notification. As for getting out of SpamCop... they ignore requests. You stay in for 48 hours after the last spam report. So we've got a couple days before things are fix _if_ nobody reports us again. I'm still trying to figure out just what and/or who caused us to be listed so we can do something about it. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): Fudge, Worldmaking, Fantasy Co-Editor, Phoenyx Co-Owner Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
On Mon, 16 Feb 2004, Carl D Cravens wrote: CDC>I'm still trying to figure out just what and/or who caused us to be CDC>listed so we can do something about it. And as Carl has pointed out in a private email, Spamcop normally notifies you. But our IP (vs. our domain name) is "owned" by our ISP, who apparently ignores Spamcop notifications. Which isn't a good sign; hopefully it was an oversight. Or maybe they just get so many false reports they ignore 'em. In any event, I need to talk to them about a separate matter (I *was* going to transfer our church's connection; depending on the results of the conversation I may be cancelling...) so they'll be getting a phone call. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): The Whole Phoenyx Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
On Mon, 16 Feb 2004, Carl D Cravens wrote: CDC>As for getting out of SpamCop... they ignore requests. You stay in for 48 CDC>hours after the last spam report. So we've got a couple days before CDC>things are fix _if_ nobody reports us again. Of course, we have four *other* IP addresses. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): The Whole Phoenyx Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
On Mon, 16 Feb 2004, Karen J. Cravens wrote: > CDC>As for getting out of SpamCop... they ignore requests. You stay in for 48 > CDC>hours after the last spam report. So we've got a couple days before > CDC>things are fix _if_ nobody reports us again. > > Of course, we have four *other* IP addresses. And the "experimental" and "aggressive" SpamCop _automatically_ blacklists new IP addresses for 24 hours if they haven't sent mail in the last week, whether they're reported as spammers or not. They basically quarantine "new" IP addresses until they prove that they're not sending spam. (I'd already thought about changing IP addresses, but that would probably cause more disruption than it's worth, even if SC didn't automatically list it.) -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): Fudge, Worldmaking, Fantasy Co-Editor, Phoenyx Co-Owner Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
On Mon, 16 Feb 2004, Carl D Cravens wrote: CDC>And the "experimental" and "aggressive" SpamCop _automatically_ blacklists CDC>new IP addresses for 24 hours if they haven't sent mail in the last CDC>week, whether they're reported as spammers or not. They basically CDC>quarantine "new" IP addresses until they prove that they're not sending CDC>spam. I'm deeply tempted to send out a Phoenyx newsletter, so as to find out exactly which addresses are subject to this blacklist and, presumeably, narrow down the list of who turned us in. Incidentally, a side effect of this is that any list members whose ISP uses Spamcop will be getting unsubscribed. However, I rather strongly suspect it was The Listowner Who Is Not Presently Among Us Because Spamcop's Bouncing All This. And only because he didn't realize it was a Phoenyx-forwarded post. To that end, I'm rewriting the listowner-forwarding stuff right now, so as to make it abundantly clear that it's a forwarded message. I'm slightly peeved; Phoenyx coding time is Monday *night*, and it's supposed to be accomplishing something productive, not running hard just to stay in place. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): The Whole Phoenyx Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
